


nothing is without consequence

by narcissablaxk



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Letter Translation, M/M, Mr. Miyagi's Letters, PTSD, Post-Okinawa Trip, Protective Johnny Lawrence, Romantic Gestures, Season 3 Spoilers, TKK 3 trauma, lawrusso, past trauma, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28577946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: When Johnny sees Daniel crying over Mr. Miyagi's old letters, he finds someone who can translate the contents for him.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 20
Kudos: 269





	nothing is without consequence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [miyagidokarate1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miyagidokarate1/gifts).



Johnny hadn’t intended on coming anywhere near Miyagi-do. Not after hearing that Daniel had gone off to Okinawa, running away from his impending divorce and the backlash it caused with his business, with his kids, with his dojo. He had been through enough shit to know when it was a heavy burden. He knew when to keep his distance. 

Except that wasn’t exactly true. He had a voice that told him he should keep his distance, but that voice was often talked over, interrupted, or virtually ignored. But the instinct was there, and that was important. 

It was Robby that brought him to Miyagi-do after all. He’d finally managed to get in to see him in juvie, with Bobby Brown sitting beside him, and the conversation hadn’t been pretty. In fact, it probably could not have gone any worse. And then, on the car ride home, Bobby had said something, almost under his breath, that stayed with Johnny for hours after. 

“It’s a shame that Daniel LaRusso understood him so well and you just…don’t.” 

He didn’t really mean to be hurtful – or maybe he did after Johnny went waltzing into his church, drunk out of his mind and blabbing about Reno and mistakes and forgiveness and all that horseshit. But Johnny couldn’t escape the fact that he was right. 

He _could_ deny it, and he tried, but no amount of booze could chase the words from his head, like the chalkboard couldn’t be erased anymore, and anyway, the doctors told him to lay off drinking until his kidneys or liver or whatever started working better. So here he was, three days later, itching for a drink and standing in the driveway of Miyagi-do, trying hard not to look at the beautiful cars that LaRusso just had lined up by the fence. 

It was irritating, how many beautiful things LaRusso had in his life and how many Johnny had pissed away. It made him want to start a fight, if only so he could provoke LaRusso into hitting him. There was nothing that made him feel more righteous or vindicated than a fight, especially a fight with LaRusso. 

He was inside – he could tell by the light in the window. Amanda told him where Daniel could be found; after their group effort to track down Robby, he didn’t really have an issue calling her for information. She seemed to understand things about him that he didn’t really want to consider, but needs must.

So he quietly stepped up to the door and knocked, looking down at his ragged red shoes, almost orange in the failing light, and listened for movement inside. He heard nothing. Maybe it was because he was knocking on one of these flimsy sliding door things that he didn’t understand the purpose of. 

He slid one open and stuck his head inside. 

“LaRusso?” he called out. The lights inside were on, revealing a modest little house with lots of open space and lightly stained wood. The place reminded him of that rehab place Shannon was in – he wrinkled his nose at the comparison and stepped inside, pulling his shoes off when he noticed a little section of the floor was marked off specifically for that purpose. 

Now even quieter in just his socks, he stepped farther into the place, eyes looking for LaRusso the way cops cleared rooms – corner to corner, check, move on. 

It was strictly procedural; he wasn’t looking at the family photos and the Asian writing and all of the rest that somehow made no sense and made perfect sense when he thought about Daniel LaRusso. 

And then he heard a noise.

He couldn’t identify it right off the bat – he walked through another set of doors into a breathtaking garden, full of faintly glowing little torches and a heavy sound of wooden chimes. He heard it again, closer this time, and closed the door quietly behind him. 

The sound of the wood hitting wood startled Daniel LaRusso into standing, and even if Johnny was distracted by the fact that he was in a pair of joggers and a sleeveless shirt, which he wasn’t, he still didn’t miss the insistent way that LaRusso wiped at his eyes, and he certainly didn’t miss the envelope he tried to hide behind his back. 

“Johnny?” he asked, surprise melting into something like suspicion. “What are you doing here?” 

“Are you crying?” Johnny asked, ignoring the question. 

“No.” 

“Sounded like you were crying,” Johnny pointed out. “But I guess that’s…understandable –”

Daniel, even with red eyes, looked exasperated. He set the little envelope on the table. “If you’re setting up for a joke –”

“I meant because you’re getting divorced,” Johnny said dryly. “Unless you wanted me to make a joke.” 

Daniel waved his hand, the same over-zealous way Johnny remembered from high school. “No, no, it’s fine.” 

“Okay, LaRusso, only if you’re sure, because I can whip one up pretty quick if need be.” 

Daniel sighed heavily, his shoulders lifting and sagging like the weight of the world was too heavy. “Why are you here, Johnny?” 

And then the wind gathered up the little envelope and swept it clean off the table. Daniel watched it happen with eyes wide and full of fear. He reached for it, but the envelope was just a few inches too far. He made a distressed noise at the back of his throat and it was that noise that pushed Johnny to act. 

He jogged down onto the grass and caught the envelope before it could fall into the pond, one foot on the rocky edge and the other in cool grass. He could feel the humidity through his sock. 

He glanced down at the envelope, just a momentary look, to see what LaRusso was so protective of, and realized, after a moment, that he couldn’t read it. It was written in…Japanese? 

“Can you read this?” he asked, passing it back to Daniel, whose eyes were wide with disbelief, his mouth just open enough that Johnny could see the tips of his slightly crooked front teeth. “That’s nerdy, even for you, LaRusso.” 

“I can’t read it,” Daniel said, holding the envelope tenderly in his hands, like it could fall apart if anyone thought about mishandling it. 

Johnny frowned. “Then…why were you reading it and crying about it?” 

Daniel sighed heavily, like explaining himself would take strength, and dropped into his chair. Johnny pulled up another one and sat. If he could manage to get through this conversation without being an asshole, then maybe Daniel would help him understand his son better. That shouldn’t be too hard, right? He could keep himself from being an asshole for a few minutes. 

And he looked up and caught Daniel looking at him with a serious look on his face, serious enough that the lines in his forehead were deep and troubled, and Johnny had the undeniable urge to reach over and smooth them out with the pad of his thumb, and he forced himself to breathe. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Daniel asked.

“Why are _you_ looking at _me_ like that?” 

Daniel considered him for another long moment, the look on his face so unreadable that Johnny wanted to get up and shake him and ask him what the hell he wanted to know, and then he turned away. 

“Those are letters Mr. Miyagi wrote to his true love,” he explained, holding the envelope in his hands and flicking at the torn opening. “When I went back to Okinawa, Kumiko gave some of them to me, to keep.” 

He had no idea who Kumiko was, but he nodded anyway. 

“He wrote about me,” Daniel continued, and there was a quiet unsteadiness to his voice that Johnny didn’t like, not quite a shake but well on its way, and he had to stamp down on the urge to interrupt him. “About how I welcomed him into my family, and how I was…” and there it was, the shake, and Daniel cut himself off, turning away to hide the emotion as if Johnny didn’t hear it, didn’t feel it pouring off of him in waves. 

“Kumiko translated a couple of them for me,” he said, and he wasn’t trying to hide the tremor in his voice anymore, and Johnny cleared his throat in sympathy. “But I didn’t realize how much I would miss knowing what they said when I got back here.” 

He stopped and looked at Johnny, like he was expecting him to say something, but his throat was dry, aching like it did when he was a child and trying not to cry in front of his mom. He met Daniel’s gaze and held it, working his jaw when Daniel didn’t speak. 

Finally, Daniel inhaled sharply and put the letter back in a little wooden box and closed it.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t –”

Johnny’s ability to speak returned with a vengeance. “It’s fine, LaRusso –”

“No, you came here for a reason –”

“I said it’s fine.” 

“Okay,” Daniel said, turning halfway around again to wipe his eyes like Johnny wouldn’t see him do it. “So…why are you here?” 

***

Hours later, back in his own bed, unable to sleep because he didn’t drink himself into a stupor before he got there, Johnny thought about Daniel and the little box of letters. About how he felt a sharp pain in his chest when Daniel’s voice shuddered and broke and he couldn’t figure out a way to fix it because it wasn’t something he _could_ fix.

It shouldn’t have bothered him that much, but while he was also worrying about his son, and about his relentless insomnia, he worried about Daniel LaRusso. Or, to be more accurate, he worried about why Daniel LaRusso crying bothered him so much.

Daniel sat with him for two hours talking about Robby, gently correcting Johnny’s incorrect assumptions about his own son, patiently reminding him to be understanding, to not be discouraged by negative reactions, and now, in the darkness of his bedroom and the ringing of someone’s goddamn car alarm outside, he realized that he felt like he was in Daniel’s debt, like he would _always_ be in Daniel’s debt, because he could _list_ the amount of things Daniel had done for him, including buying juice and gas station food and trying to give him the opportunity to make things right with his son, and he felt like he would never be finished. 

The list would continue, and what had Johnny done for Daniel? 

Gave him an empty promise about Kreese and ruined his knee. 

He groaned and covered his eyes with his hands. He needed to stop thinking about him and sleep. 

Except he didn’t really do that – he dozed for a few hours and woke up irritable and achy. But, around four in the morning, when he had gotten all the way to the fridge for a beer before he remembered that he was trying not to drink that much anymore, he figured out what he could do.

He might never fix things with Robby (though a quick check of his phone told him he had another visit in a week to try), but he could maybe fix this. 

And Johnny worked as a handyman long enough to know how good it felt to fix something. 

***

He found the woman on a website that Miguel directed him to – Craigslist. Shitty name for a website, but whatever. She was a Japanese language teacher at the local community college – her name was Aki – at least that’s how she signed the email she sent that Miguel read to him. 

The first thing she wanted to know was if the letters were in Okinawan Japanese or in Okinawan, as if Johnny knew what the fuck the difference was. She tried to explain it to him; something about Kunigami and Amami and frankly, Johnny couldn’t follow it, and it took Miguel a hell of a lot of Googling to follow it, too, so he didn’t feel too bad. 

Still, she said she would be happy to try to translate the letters, so now all Johnny had to do was get them so she could translate them. Or, he had to tell Daniel that he’d hired a stranger on the internet to translate some incredibly important letters with extreme sentimental value. 

“There’s no way this woman could be…like a…what did you call it? A trout?” 

Miguel laughed behind his hand. “A catfish?” he corrected. 

“Same shit,” Johnny waved him off. 

“Not unless she literally pulled her name and email from the community college website,” Miguel said diplomatically. “I looked her up, see?” 

He tilted the computer in his direction and showed him a photo of a young Japanese woman with short, dark hair and red glasses perched on the edge of her nose. 

“She’s pretty,” Johnny commented. 

“ _Dude_ ,” Miguel reprimanded. “I thought you were doing this for Mr. LaRusso.” 

Johnny scoffed. “I’m doing something nice for him. I’m not…doing it because –”

Miguel looked up at him, eyes full of disbelief and incredulity. 

“Shut up,” Johnny muttered. 

***

Aki was definitely not a trout – or a catfish. Johnny met her outside the gate of Miyagi-do after checking to make sure that Daniel was home and alone. She reminded him of the very few teachers he’d had in college before he dropped out – baggy sweater and hair gathered into a messy bun, bracelets that clanged with every movement, an open look in her eyes. 

She shook his hand with a firm grip when he offered, and listened carefully when he explained why he’d hired her in the first place. 

“So your boyfriend has these letters –”

“Oh, he’s not –”

Aki paused, eyes on Johnny’s face, looking for the joke. “Seriously? You did all this for just a friend?” 

Johnny looked away before shrugging one shoulder. Aki laughed, a raspy, low thing that didn’t really jive with the rest of her look before moving on. Still, she looked at him like she was endlessly amused by him, and at least _someone_ was entertained.

He found Daniel sitting outside again, the little wooden box untouched on the table. He scrambled up to his feet when he heard Johnny’s footsteps, so fast that Johnny wondered what it was he was so scared of. Aki followed in close behind him, and Daniel looked past Johnny to Aki and back to him, face morphing somehow from fear to suspicion to confusion. 

“What’s this?” 

It took Johnny a while to explain himself – Aki busied herself with admiring the garden to give them privacy, which Johnny didn’t fucking appreciate, because if LaRusso somehow took offense to Johnny inserting himself in his business, a stranger within earshot would help keep him polite. 

“You hired this woman…” 

“On Craigsshit, some website,” Johnny added. “Miguel and I looked her up, she’s no trout.” 

Daniel blinked. “She’s what?” 

“She’s legit,” Johnny amended, as if that clarified anything. “She’s just going to translate them for you so you can remember what the letters say.” 

Daniel’s eyes went big and wide, the same way they did when they were teenagers and Johnny was threatening him. He remembered seeing that same expression across the mat before their match – Daniel chewing on his fingernails, eyes exactly the same, shifting from one foot to another. 

And then he furrowed his brow, and there were the little wrinkles again, and Johnny shoved his hand in his pocket to keep himself from reaching out to touch. 

“But why?” 

Johnny floundered. Why indeed? 

“You helped me with Robby,” he said after a moment. Not _you haunted me while I was trying to get some goddamned sleep,_ or _seeing you cry is really fucking sad, so sad that I kind of can’t stand it._ Maybe that part didn’t matter. 

Daniel looked at him like he had another question, one that Johnny was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to answer, but Aki took that moment to trot up the step and say, “Shall I get started?” 

***

The first letter was fine, all about Daniel and his kids and his wife. Johnny only half-listened, trying to let Daniel have privacy with these important memories. Instead, he found himself staring into the pond, with the round platform in the middle, balanced precariously with two bonsai trees. 

What the hell was that thing for? Or was this just LaRusso’s weird attempt at yard decoration? 

It was the second letter that caught his attention. He was just walking toward the house when he heard Aki say “Terry Silver.” He remembered that name, but it wasn’t until he saw Daniel blanch, his tan face losing all color, that he realized where he knew it. 

Cobra Kai’s original owner, Terry Silver. Daniel’s furious face across the table at the committee meeting, spitting at Johnny that he didn’t believe that Johnny didn’t know Terry Silver, the venom out of character and concerning. 

He froze, and turned toward Aki, catching Daniel’s gaze as he did. He was looking at Johnny, but his eyes were somewhere far away. Johnny’s feet carried him up the step to stand beside Aki, as if he could look over her shoulder and read himself. 

“Terry Silver must be training Daniel-san for the tournament,” Aki continued. “He comes home late, covered in bruises, short-tempered and angry. He won’t tell me what is happening, but an old man can guess.” 

Johnny tore his eyes away from the letter and looked at Daniel, who was still looking out toward the yard, his jaw tight, tears flowing steadily down his face. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t even acknowledge what he was hearing. 

“He is drifting away from me, Yukie. There is no heartbreak like watching your family drift, unmoored. I can offer a lighthouse, but I cannot make him see it.” 

Finally, Daniel released a gasping breath, and Johnny left Aki’s side to sit beside him, his hand over Daniel’s shaky one. Daniel turned his hand and gripped Johnny’s tightly, so tightly Johnny almost winced. The sound of him crying felt like someone was shifting his insides around with a hot poker – wretched and painful and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to pull Daniel into his arms and hold him just to make it stop. 

“Keep going,” Daniel said when Aki looked up, troubled. 

“Daniel-san has strong roots, but roots can still be torn out of the ground. Perhaps that is what this man plans to do, beat him and change him until his roots are shallow and easier to pull free. I hope he is strong enough to look back and see me waiting for him.”

She looked up at them both, folding the letter and putting it back in the envelope carefully. Daniel was looking down at the wood beneath their feet, his hand in Johnny’s loosening until it was almost limp. Johnny looked up at her and raised his eyebrows. The instinct to hold him hadn’t abated – he itched to do it, to hold onto something, and maybe he was just too tactile, or maybe a million other things. 

“Maybe we should take a break,” Aki said after a long bout of silence.

***

In the end, Aki rescheduled for another day. She set aside the letters she translated and fixed a date with Daniel in her phone, her demeanor still kind and calm even after all she’d seen. Johnny, on the other hand, was left on the porch, still reeling with information that hadn’t been explained. 

Bruises? Training with Terry Silver, the owner of Cobra Kai? 

He didn’t even want to touch the idea of breaking Mr. Miyagi’s heart. Knowing how much LaRusso worshipped the man, damaging their relationship must have been painful. 

LaRusso found him on the porch a few minutes later, still staring out at the garden like it would explain things to him. He heard him come up behind him but let him stand there in silence until he chose to speak, trying to beat back the instinct that was begging him to ask LaRusso who the hell Terry Silver was. 

“I know you want to ask,” is all he said after a few minutes of silence. 

“You gonna tell me?” Johnny replied. 

He turned to see Daniel, bathed in the light of the setting sun. After a moment, he shrugged. 

“Depends on what you want to know.” 

He came around to sit beside Johnny, looking out over the garden. Johnny wondered if it hurt to do that, to look out at all Mr. Miyagi had left him and given him, after hearing about how much pain he’d accidentally caused.

Daniel held out his hand to Johnny, palm up, and it took him a long moment to realize what he was doing. He reached out and took it, threading their fingers together. His hand was clammy. 

“Terry Silver?” 

“Tricked me,” Daniel said simply. “Told me that Kreese was dead and he had lost his way. Offered to train me for the '85 All Valley when Mr. Miyagi wouldn’t.” 

Bruises, Johnny remembered. Mr. Miyagi taught Daniel karate, he knew that bruises were part of the deal. So if he mentioned them…

“What did he do to you?” 

There must have been something in his voice that caught Daniel’s attention, because he shifted so he was looking almost completely at Johnny instead of the garden. He studied Johnny’s face, finding answers where Johnny had only questions. 

“Worse than anything you did to me,” he said vaguely.

“LaRusso –”

Wordlessly, he pulled up the leg of his pants, offering his tan leg for Johnny to see. When he turned, the light shined over little scars, healed scratches all over his shin down to his ankles and bare feet. After a moment, he held up their joined hands and turned his hand over. The same scars sparkled on his knuckles. 

“ _Jesus Christ_ –”

He wondered if Terry Silver was alive after all, the same way Kreese was. He wished, for a heated, selfish moment, that he was alive, so Johnny could beat him back into the grave. It would be what he deserved. Daniel would have been a kid in '85, not even old enough to order a beer, and Silver – he looked down at Daniel’s hand again – brutalized him. 

“Johnny,” Daniel yanked him back to the present, to the serene garden. “If you’re going to get angry, give me my hand back.” 

Shit, he was clenching his hand. He loosened his grip, but Daniel didn’t pull free. He kept holding on, even if he turned their hands so his scars were no longer visible. 

“So why did you hire Aki?” he asked, his thumb soothingly rubbing over Johnny’s knuckles. 

“I told you, because –”

“Because I helped you with Robby, sure,” Daniel nodded. “Except I asked Aki how much she charged for her translations, and her fee is…it’s steep. And she insisted that you already paid her.” He raised his eyebrows at him. “So…I don’t think this is just about Robby.” 

Johnny lifted Daniel’s hand to kiss the scarred knuckles, keeping his eyes on his face. He watched carefully for his reaction – LaRusso was nothing if not an open book. But all he did was smile, a sad, tired smile that reminded Johnny that he’d been crying only half an hour before. 

Still, he was powerless to stop Daniel when he leaned in for a real kiss, and satisfied himself by being gentle, so gentle that he’d call himself a pussy for it later, but when he opened his eyes, he could see that Daniel’s eyelashes were still wet, and he didn’t care what he’d say about it later. 

He went in for another kiss, long and slow, gentle where all of LaRusso’s memories seemed to be sharp and jagged. Daniel didn’t let go of his hand. He settled for using his other hand to coax Daniel’s mouth open, his hand a gentle pressure on the side of his face, and ran his thumb under Daniel’s eyes, where the tears had been that he didn’t have the courage to wipe away.

“I want to hear that whole story, later,” Johnny clarified when they were just sitting there, lying on their backs on the porch, looking up at the sky. “When you’re ready to tell it.”


End file.
